Soviet revisionist propaganda has lately proclaimed the results of the
23d Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union both in the
country and abroad. It tries to make the Soviet people and world public
opinion believe that the Congress had been a success, that it had
allegedly turned into an important national and international event,
that its «ideas» will exert a great influence in the minds of people,
that it has an epochal character in Soviet history, and so on and so
forth.

Obviously, the Khrushchevite revisionists try to achieve by means of
words and propaganda that which they had wished their Congress to have
been, to arouse some enthusiasm among the people, to paralyze negative
impressions both in the Soviet Union and in other countries, in short,
to raise the morale of all those who had expected something grand and
important from the sittings of the highest organ of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union and who were badly disappointed for all that.

«Pravda», «Izvestia» and other organs of Soviet propaganda are now
blaming the bourgeois press for lack of realism, since, according to
them, it had expected «sensations» from the Congress, but which it
failed to get, for there had not been any in it. If only the bourgeois
press had been disillusioned which, this time seem to have had bad
luck, as the Soviet newspapers write, this would have been, most
likely, quite a normal thing. But we do not believe that this lack of
ability of the bourgeois press to assess events aright, is what
preoccupies revisionist leaders most. The hard luck of the revisionists
is that the proceedings of the 23 Congress have disillusioned the
Soviet people, the Soviet communists, who didn’t of course, expect
sensations but a comprehensive clarification of the political line of
the party at the present stage. By rising against the «expectations of
sensations» the Soviet press tries to enhance the true value of the
results of the Congress which were low and mediocre indeed. The
proceedings and decisions of the 23 Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union did not satisfy, first and above all, the Soviet
people who clearly saw once again that the present Soviet leadership is
as treacherous as Khrushchev, that the line it adopted at the Congress
is an anti-Marxist one, a line leading to the capitalist political,
economic and ideological degeneration of the Soviet Union, a line which
dealt a blow to and darkened above all the perspectives for the future
of the Soviet people. The results of the Congress may arouse some
interest outside the Soviet Union but this is by no means the main
thing. Attempts to attract the attention of public opinion in this
direction, as the Soviet press is doing, shows that all is not too well
between the Khrushchevite revisionists and their people that the former
want to draw the attention of their people away from the gloomy
pessimist atmosphere which the Congress has created in the Soviet,
Union.

The Congress itself has been a major embarrassment for the
Khrushchevite leaders. Should they or should they not speak openly on
all cardinal matters which preoccupy at present the Soviet people,
should they or should they not openly propound their opportunist line —
this was their dilemma.

During these last ten years the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has
held three Congresses (the 20th, the 21st and the 22nd) which defined
and canonized the revisionist line of Khrushchev’s group which usurped
the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the
Soviet State by counter-revolutionary putsches. In them decisions were
taken, directives were set forth, objectives were marked and time
limits were set. Now it is high time to render account. Should the
Congress hear a report on these? The Soviet Union has all along pursued
a foreign policy totally at variance with the one jointly worked out by
socialist countries. Should this be taken up? Not very long ago (in
1957 and 1960) the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
had signed certain very important; documents of the international
communist movement which clearly defined its joint program. It rejected
these documents and followed a line of action of its own. Should an
explanation be given about this? During this period it pursued the line
of departure from Marxism-Leninism and the adoption, on a growing
scale, of modern revisionism. In the internal domain it zealously
undermined the achievement of the October Revolution and started
restoring capitalism, whereas in foreign policy it adopted the line of
collaboration with American imperialism to establish the domination of
two great Powers over the world; it turned its back on the friends of
the Soviet Union and got closer to its enemies; it did its uttermost to
split the international communist movement and the anti-imperialist
front; it sabotaged the national-liberation movements of peoples and
renounced the revolution and the ideals of communism. What were the
results of this line, of these attitudes and acts? If the Khrushchevite
clique enjoyed the support of the Soviet people, which it pretends to
enjoy, then why did it not come out openly in the Congress to defend
its views which it calls correct, «Leninist», «realistic»,
«scientific», and so on?

Apparently this does not seem to have been an easy job. The skein of
its contradictions with the party and the people is so badly entangled
that it does not know where to start. If they expounded their line
openly at the Congress the Soviet leaders would expose themselves as
traitors to Marxism-Leninism and dangerous counter-revolutionaries,
would reveal to the Soviet people and to all the world their plots and
vile methods in wresting the leadership of the party and of the state,
they would reveal their insidious schemes against the revolution,
against socialism and peace. Confrontation with reality, with truth
would be a death blow for them. That which is their main concern at
this Congress was to evade grappling with the basic problems of Soviet
and international life, to pass by in silence the major preoccupations,
doubts and alarmings of Soviet people, to give no reply to embarrassing
questions which Soviet life has now brought to the fore as a result of
the treacherous deeds of the revisionists.

The 23d Congress was a Congress «to freeze» all the problems that preoccupy the Soviet people at present.

In the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union there has
never been so colorless a Congress as the 23d Congress which the new
Khrushchevite leaders organized and held these recent days. If we were
to sum up in one word its proceedings we would be inclined to say that
it is the Congress of «freezing» all the problems which preoccupy the
Soviet people today. The report which Brezhneev presented to the
Congress on behalf of the Central Committee of the Party resembled,
more than anything else, a speech by a plain agitator to a usual solemn
meeting in a factory. Schematic discussions and the monotonous
repetition of the figures of the new five-year plan drawn out of his
report which had been made public and discussed for quite a long time,
could not impart life to a soul-less corpse. As long as the essential
problems had been buried beforehand, recitations at the Congress were
bound to be lifeless.

The question here is, of course, not that the organizers lacked the
power of oratory or of writing out speeches. We have met these paladins
of Khrushchevite revisionism at the 20th Congress and especially at the
22nd Congress where they let their tongues loose. The lowered tone of
their voice is no sign of maturity or wisdom as some may interpret it.
It determines a definite situation of contradictory relations, not only
between the leader's of the party, on one hand, and the communists and
people, on the other, but also between the Soviet revisionist leaders
and their revisionist allies of other parties. It is not hard to
notice, for instance, that Brezhneev’s political report is a careful
compilation of compromises not to treat of the most fundamental
questions running through Soviet life these recent years and formulate
the revisionist line avoiding anything that might arouse disputes and
discontent among their allies. It is not accidental that such
outstanding members of the Khrushchevite clique as Suslov, Shelepin,
Mikoyan, Polyansky and others uttered not a word at the Congress. It is
hard to believe that they had nothing to say. But at a congress filled
with restraints, where words had to be sugar-coated, where even the
slightest attempt at delving deep into any matter of more or less
importance would risk letting the cat out of the bag, under such
circumstances silence is golden. This silence as well as the weak
economic and political status of the Soviet Union, as brought out at
the Congress, were very much to the liking of the allies of
Khrushchevite revisionists who are very eager to see the Soviet Union
weakened in all respects. Thus, they can more easily rid themselves of
the conductor’s baton and rely on the support of their national
bourgeoisie.

At a congress of a genuine communist party, its central committee does
not only render account to the members of the party but reports on the
policy and activity of the party to the people as a whole. In
particular, it draws up there a balance sheet of the fulfilment of
tasks and directives set forth at the preceding congress and analyzes
all the important events that have taken place or the various measures
the central committee has taken during the interval between two
congresses. But nothing of this kind was done nor could anything of
this kind be done at the 23d Congress of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union. With the exception of certain general, unspecified and
vague words, nothing was said about what has happened and what has been
done after the 22nd Congress. Nothing was said, for instance, on how
the line of the 22nd Congress has been worked out and put into
execution. The 22nd Congress had especially attacked Stalin and had
called on fighting «J. V. Stalin’s cult of the individual» to the end.
Why were the results of this campaign not reported to the Congress? At
the preceding Congress Khrushchev assailed the Party of Labor and the
People’s Republic of Albania, in the Resolution of the Congress there
were pleadings and threats, there were expressions of «hopes» and
«demands» towards our country. But what was done after that? What
policy did the Soviet leaders pursue towards our Party and our people?
Khrushchev and his intimate collaborators ruptured diplomatic relations
with Albania, they established an all-round blockade against our
country, they plotted against the freedom and independence of a
socialist country to which they were bound by numerous obligations
publicly entered into. Should the Party and the Soviet people not be
given some kind of explanation about all these things?

Immediately after the 22nd Congress, the Soviet leaders launched their
ill-famed campaign against the People’s Republic of China and it?
Communist Party, linked up with the United States to encircle China and
set up an anti-Chinese «cordon of fire», helped Indian reactionaries to
attack China, and so on and so forth. Finally, following the invitation
it received, the Communist Party of China refused to take part at the
23d Congress and sent a letter to the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union explaining the reason for such
action. But why did the Soviet leaders not speak about the state of
Soviet-Chinese relations at the Congress, why did they not make public
the contents of the above letter, in short, why did they not publicly
defend, their stand towards China? Moreover, in July 1963 the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union published its
anti-Chinese Open Letter and its 1964 February plenum passed an.
anti-Chinese party resolution. These were, by no means, insignificant
events of the past the consequences of which were not worth reporting
to the Congress. After the 22nd Congress followed the well-known
Caribbean events in which the Soviet Union was directly involved. What
policy was pursued at that time, how is it assessed now, did they act
well or badly?

It is already a fact that the communist movement is split just as the
socialist camp is split, for a major and bitter polemic has been going
on for a long time between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists. The
Soviet leaders have exerted and continue to exert major efforts to
establish the hegemony of the «conductor’s baton» over communist
parties, they interfere brutally in the internal affairs o£ those
parties which loyally abide by Marxism-Leninism, support renegades in
various parties, and so on. Communists and the Soviet people are eager
to know what is going on in this field, but the organizers of the
Congress passed over these matters in silence at the Congress, as if
they did not exist at all, or as if they themselves had not taken
direct part in them.

None of those taking the floor at the Congress failed to eulogize the
1964 October plenum which seems to have been highly propitious and
«salutary». But no one ever mentioned Khrushchev’s name, no one ever
said what was done at that plenum. It is a known fact that it ousted
Khrushchev who, up to that time, held the highest functions in the
Soviet Union, that of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Party and of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, not to mention
others. In the official communique of the plenum it was said at that
time that he gave up the functions he held for reasons of health and
advanced age. This formula was neither confirmed nor denied at the
Congress. Anyone can ask: How is it possible not to report to the Party
what happened to its First Secretary, not to inform the people why the
Government was changed? Whatever the case may have been, the new Soviet
leaders should either have paid homage to Khrushchev who «retired
because of old age and ill health» or should have called him publicly
to account for his «subjectivism», «voluntarism» and so on. A silence
like this has never been maintained in an earnest communist party.

We pointed out above some of the problems which preoccupy Soviet
society and which the 23d Congress totally ignored as if they never
existed. It is of course clear to everybody that by failing to speak of
these matters, they do not cease to exist, they do not lose their
sharpness and actuality. In its April 6 editorial dedicated to the
winding up of discussions on the first item of the order of the day of
the Congress — Brezhneev’s report — the «Pravda» daily proclaimed «the
unanimity and compactness» which seems allegedly to have reigned at the
Congress during the first part of its proceedings. The paper did not
explain in what this unanimity existed, in those that were said or in
those that were left unsaid which, according to the views or ratio of
forces in the ranks of the leaders, should not be taken up and
confronted. But compromises do not last long, they never give a
complete and permanent solution. The history of the leadership of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from Stalin’s death onward is
itself a major example of the futility of these compromises and their
luckless consequences.

It is already an incontestable fact that no political or ideological
unity exists in the Soviet community and, in spite of all efforts of
the leaders to avert any expression of it in the proceedings of the
Congress, it still emerged, in one way or another, here too. It was
noticed in the anxieties of many debaters who appealed for political
and ideological unity, in the preoccupations of many for unwholesome
manifestations in educating the young generation or for liberalism
which reigns today in the domain of letters and arts, for disruption in
economy, and so on.

Grasped between serious internal and external contradictions, which
have arisen and are developing as a consequence of failures which
Khrushchevites have met with so far, the new Soviet leaders did their
uttermost to receive the approval of their future line from the
Congress. To achieve this they resorted to all methods and means
ranging from passing by in silence over the most acute problems to
dropping all such favorable terms of Khrushchevite revisionists as the
«state of all the people» and «the party of all the people», from
maneuvering with the figures of the new five-year period to the lack of
the braggings of the Khrushchev type, from evading to raise new
«theoretic matters», or to formulate new «codes» of communism to
demagogic outbursts for «unity» and «anti-imperialist» attitudes, and
so on. Of course, this new «style» was not adopted to stress the
difference from Khrushchev’s line. It is part of the demagogical
tactics of Khrushchev's successors who try to preserve the ideological
heritage and political line of then-predecessor but without making a
lot of noise and raising a great fuss about it. The tactics of the new
leaders is the familiar tactics of double-dealing, of under-cover acts,
of silent plots and backstage intrigues. The proceedings and decisions
of the 23d Congress prove once more that they are determined to proceed
along this road, that is, to carry out Khrushchevism without
Khrushchev, to fight Marxism-Leninism but not by his crude and
authoritarian methods, to collaborate with American imperialism but
without boasting out loud about it, to continue wrecking the
international communist movement and the socialist camp, but to do it
in the name of «unity», in short, to say one thing and do another. But
nothing can come to the rescue of the new Soviet leaders. The
dialectics of things is such that any attempt to overcome difficulties
and contradictions on the basis of the line which has created them can
bring nothing else but a deepening of those difficulties and
contradictions, thus, the inevitable and ultimate collapse of
Khrushchevite revisionism.

Congress of Khrushchevism without Khrushchev

What did the 23d Congress show? It showed that the new Soviet leaders
persist on loyally pursuing to the end the treacherous, capitulating,
anti-Marxist line of the 20th and 22nd Congresses, on carrying out
under all conditions the Khrushchevite revisionist line of betrayal and
capitulation embodied in the program of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union. The general line of Khrushchevite revisionism remains
intact in all internal and external matters. The theses of the 20th and
22nd Congress remain, as they have been so far, the gospel of Soviet
revisionists for which they vow and which inspire them for new
counter-revolutionary acts. In certain matters, such as the management
and direction of economy, the new leaders have even gone further ahead
of the revisionist way. They compelled the Congress to adopt the new
economic reforms which mark a further step towards creating more
favorable conditions for the re-establishment of capitalism in the
Soviet Union.

Brezhneev, Kosigyn and many other orators brought many figures to the
Congress and played with them just as jugglers play with their sticks
at the circus. They took great pains to persuade their auditors about
the «benefits» which will allegedly accrue to the Soviet people by this
five-year plan, about the place which Soviet economy will be occupying
in the world, about its international influence, and so on. But the
Soviet people have heard such promises from revisionist leaders many
times before during these recent years. Some years ago Khrushchev and
his collaborators, who are now top leaders of the party and the state,
promised to the Soviet people that by 1970 they would have reached the
highest peaks of human welfare, that, if not altogether in communism
they would be at the threshold of it. «The drafted general plan
envisages such an increase of consumer’s goods», Kosygin declared at
the 22nd Congress, «that by 1970 we will surpass the level of
production per capita of the more advanced capitalist countries
including the USA». At the present Congress Kosygin made no reference
to the former promises. He was even obliged in a way to admit that the
revisionist course has brought with it many shortcomings. By way of
justification, he tried to throw the blame on agriculture which,
according to him, by lagging behind «hampered the accomplishment of
tasks to develop the light food-processing industry, a thing which
could not but influence the slackening of the rate of increase of
national incomes and of material welfare of the laboring masses». He
said that another factor which has exerted an influence in this matter
has been the decrease of yield of work which has been lower during the
preceding five-year period than during the last one. In his report
Kosygin tried hard not to reveal the true causes why many of the
targets of the 7-year state plan were not reached. He said that
mistakes and wrong calculations have been made but he did not say who
has made these mistakes, who was he or they who have maintained «a
thoughtless voluntarist stand towards the solution of many complicated
economic problems», who have «envisaged tasks wrongly based
economically and impossible of being accomplished.» Everybody knows
that at the time the 7-year plan of the USSR was drawn up, Kosygin,
because of the post he held at the time, was one of the men who drew it
up and, before Khrushchev’s downfall, he was one of its most ardent
propagandists who often pointed out the «scientific» basis of the plan,
its realization and so on and so forth. This is, for instance what he
had declared at the 22nd Congress: «The successful development of
national economy shows in a most convincing way how correct and timely
is the course undertaken by the Central Committee of the Party under
Comrade Khrushchev’s leadership to further improve the economic
structure of production on the basis of data provided by science and
technique.... We have now achieved such a level of development that the
building of communism has become a practical and direct task of the
Soviet people.... The Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, Comrade Khrushchev’s speeches to the Congress, represent a
brilliant example of a deep analysis of social life, a creative
development and enrichment of Marxist-Leninist theory-. Whereas at the
23d Congress he denounced «subjectivism, in solving economic problems,
foppish disregard for scientific and technical data».

We wonder what Kosygin will be saying at the 24th Congress. But
buffoonery has nothing to do with either science or Marxism. He speaks
to suit the occasion, he denies today what he has said formerly, what
he proclaims today as .the last word in science and technique he is
liable to discard tomorrow as «foppish disregard towards science».
Under such conditions can the Soviet people lend credit to the fresh
promises by Brezhneev, Kosygin and their companions? Can they trust the
«scientific» assurances for the new economic reforms and plans? The
Soviet people and all the revolutionaries of the world see very clearly
that all these maneuvers, all this play of words aim at concealing one
thing: the collapse of the treacherous revisionist line which, through
the anti-Marxist economic policy of these leaders intends to restore
capitalism in the Soviet Union,

Khrushchev made many reforms and his successors did not lag behind. But
they brought no benefits to the Soviet people. On the contrary, they
have wasted many material values created by the toil and sweat of the
people, they have aroused a feeling of pessimism in the country and
have stifled creative forces, the live work of the Soviet people is
smothered by repeated organizations and reorganizations which have
confused and perplexed the people. If the revisionist leaders have
today any preoccupation at all, it is that of satisfying and fulfilling
all the whims of the privileged strata of the high functionaries of the
party and of the state, of the technocrats and of the armymen of
superior grades on whom they rely to maintain their power and to carry
out their plans to degenerate Soviet society into a bourgeois one.

The economy of the Soviet Union has embarked now and is proceeding
non-stop along the Yugoslav path. Those forms and methods which turned
Titoite economy to an appendage of the economy of the capitalist world
are being gradually adopted. Apparently, the Soviet leaders have found
ready-made recipes to carry out their treacherous schemes which
undermine the very foundations of the major achievements of the October
Revolution, the brilliant results and successes the Soviet people had
attained during a number of decades in bitter battle to build
socialism. The head of the delegation of the Titoite clique at the 23
Congress, Alexander Rankovich, famous murderer of the peoples of
Yugoslavia, frantic anti-Soviet and reckless enemy of socialism, spoke
of this very enthusiastically. He took advantage of the rostrum of the
Congress the Soviet revisionist leaders offered him in order to
advertise «the Yugoslav experience», in order to stress the need «for a
further improved exchange of it». But no matter how much its
sympathizers and the intimate comrades of the Titoite clique who now
stand arbitrarily at the top of the party and state in the USSR, may
applaud him, the Soviet people cannot fail to know what the «Yugoslav
way» represents, they cannot fail to know what is happening in
Yugoslavia today and what the condition of the Yugoslav people is.

Present day Yugoslavia, in spite of numerous «certificates» and
«documents» by which the Soviet revisionist leaders have proclaimed it
«a socialist country», represents a state subjected from top to bottom
under the political and economic control of the imperialists and the
internal reactionary bourgeoisie represented by Tito’s clique. In its
economy there is a growing day to day manifestation of the ugly
bourgeois phenomena of competition, unemployment, uneven development of
districts and regions, chauvinist pressures of economically more
powerful groups, rivalry for markets, and so on. A paradise of this
kind lies ahead also for the Soviet Union if it proceeds along the road
the present revisionist leaders urge it to go. And the first signs are
disquieting a lot for the Soviet people. Their top leaders, following
faithfully Khrushchev’s footsteps, have begun and are inviting foreign
capital to be invested in the Soviet Union. Important negotiations are
going on with Japanese capital for investments in the Far East, while
the large Italian Fiat firm has concluded a very important agreement to
open a branch in the Soviet Union. Under the form of long-term credits,
of free international economic exchange, which, as Kosygin alleged in
his speech to the Congress, «are needed because of the technical and
scientific revolution», the Soviet leaders intend to link the economy
of their country with the capitalist economy of the USA, England, West
Germany, Japan and others. By resorting to a thing of this kind they
hope in this way to speed up the capitalist transformation of the
Soviet economy and to set up another basis on which to consolidate
their power. These, of course, are their own calculations. But the last
word will be said by the Soviet people who have not fought and shed so
much blood so that their country may become a new Russia, of the Czars.

Persistent continuation of pro-imperialist policy

One of the questions taken up most at the 23d Congress was that of the
problems of foreign policy which occupied a major part of the speeches
of the Soviet leaders and of their friends invited to the Congress. All
of this uneasiness is fully understandable. Because of their
treacherous, capitulating and counter-revolutionary policy the Soviet
revisionists have come up against a general conflict with all the
anti-imperialist forces of the world. The line of Soviet-American
collaboration to establish the domination of two great Powers over the
world is meeting with the opposition of countries and peoples who see a
direct threat to their freedom and independence in these
imperialist-revisionist plots. The major revolutionary events that have
taken place in the world have made it impossible for Soviet
revisionists to wear the anti-imperialist mask which they desire to
keep in order to mislead public opinion. Therefore, just as expected,
Khrushchev’s successors occupied themselves at the Congress mainly with
the task of justifying their capitulating policy and of improving upon
their well-known demagogical tactics of hurling the stone and hiding
the hand that threw it. The analysis they made to the international
situation, which was almost a word for word repetition of that of the
20th and 22nd Congresses, was intended to find, or better said, to
establish some vantage grounds to derive fresh «proofs» to justify
their course of collaboration with imperialism under the already known
form of «peaceful co-existence», «peaceful competition», and so on.

But, unlike Khrushchev, the new leaders do not blab their intentions
out openly; if judged by words they say, they are even liable to be
considered as the most intransigent anti-imperialists. At the Congress
there were heard so many harsh verbal attacks against American
imperialism, so many curses and harsh anathema against it, so much that
who knows what would happen if they were in earnest about them!

But whoever followed the proceedings of the 23d Congress could not help
noticing that the «anti-imperialism» of the Soviet revisionists is,
from top to bottom, a bluff, a faded out coating to mask their concrete
acts in support of imperialism. Both in Brezhneev’s and Kosygin’s
reports as well as in the discussions by Gromyko and by other orators,
the condemnation of American imperialism and its aggressive policy did
not go beyond a general, abstract and formal reproach. With regard to
concrete matters of international relations, the Soviet leaders
expressed, as heretofore, their readiness to cooperate with the USA in
order to solve them within the framework of Soviet-American relations.
Thus, for instance, Brezhneev, after making a full-mouthed
advertisement in his speech to the Congress of revisionist
anti-imperialism, after speaking a great deal about American aggression
in Viet Nam, stressed: «We have often expressed our readiness to
develop our relations with the USA and now we maintain the same
attitude». Through this he wanted to tell the Americans: «Don’t mind
the words we are obliged to say about you, we will continue to pursue
the policy of contact and collaboration in the future as well». And it
must be said that the Americans interpreted aright the language used at
the 23d Congress. The American newspaper «Christian Science Monitor»
while commenting the speeches on foreign policy delivered at the
Congress, summed up all the essence of revisionist attitude in a few
words: «harsh line, tender deeds». The entire Western press is
enthusiastic as the Congress «left the door open for collaboration,
with the West».

The maneuvers which were used at the Congress to demagogize with
anti-imperialist slogans were great, but they can no longer deceive
anybody. Everybody knows that what the Soviet revisionists have close
to their heart is to continue and broaden Soviet-American collaboration
to dominate the world. Just as heretofore, Khrushchevite revisionist
leaders of the Soviet Union are striving doggedly to conclude a new
agreement with the USA to stop the spread of nuclear weapons so as to
secure the atomic monopoly of the two great Powers, they are trying
hard to subjugate UNO and to turn it into a tool of Soviet-American
combinations, they are working tooth and nail together with the USA, to
complete «the encirclement by fire» of China, they help in collusion
with American imperialists to arm Indian reactionaries and instigate
their warmongering anti-Chinese desires, they actively coordinate their
actions with American «global strategy» to suppress liberation wars in
Asia, Africa and Latin America, they persist on pursuing the policy of
reconciliation with German revanchism and sacrifice the vital interests
of the German and other European socialist peoples for the sake of this
contact with the USA., and so on. It is precisely these concrete acts,
to mention but a few, that represent the treacherous revisionist
policy, that point out their dangerous trend, their capitulating
designs. Everything else is demagogy to deceive people, a trap laid to
enslave peoples, a dangerous maneuver to stab the revolution and
socialism on the back.

Typical in this regard is the unbridled, unrestrained demagogy in
connection with Viet Nam, which reached the acme of its ugliness at the
23d Congress. Many nice words were uttered on behalf of the war of the
Vietnamese people, against American aggression and, of course, there
was no lack of promises for aid and support. But what is this aid, what
does it represent now and what will it amount to in the future?
Brezhneev said that «the aggressors will come up against the growing
aid of the Soviet Union to Viet Nam», Kosygin that «we shall continue
this support at the level required» while Gromyko confined his remarks
to: «the Americans should take these declarations seriously».

But these are mere words. As a matter of fact, neither Brezhneev,
Kosygin nor Gromyko said a single word regarding the imperialist plot
of «peaceful talks» and they did not discard this devilish maneuver
which aims at making the Vietnamese people capitulate. This is by no
means casual. It is a known fact that the Soviet revisionist leaders,
just as the Titoites, as the Indian reactionaries and others, are
supporters of the imperialist thesis of «unconditional talks».
Khrushchevite leaders bragged a good deal about the «aid» they give to
Viet Nam, but the value of this aid to the war against aggressors is
quite insignificant. This can be confirmed by a very simple fact: if
the Soviet arms were so dangerous a factor for the American
imperialists why have they so far shown so little concern about this
act of the Soviet people? It is known that in 1962 when Khrushchev
dispatched Soviet rockets to Cuba the American imperialists did not
only fret and fume but they compelled Khrushchev to capitulate and
withdraw the rockets from Cuba by accepting American control.
Therefore, the question is not that the Americans attach no importance
to the problem of armed aid. But the American imperialists do not raise
a hue and cry about it because there must surely exist some secret
agreement between the Soviet leaders and Johnson and the Pentagon (to
what other use could the red teletype be put?) in which the limits are
set for Soviet «aid» to Viet Nam, what and how much can be sent without
endangering in the least the imperialist aggressors.

The Soviet leaders boasted a great deal that they possess continental
and intercontinental, cosmic and universal rockets, that their atomic
sub-marines now tour the world without being detected, that they have
set up «blue circles of defense», and so on and so forth. But what
influence does this exert in the Viet Nam war to ward off imperialist
aggression? These pretensions disclose more clearly the great truth
that the revisionist leaders give no effective aid to Viet Nam, that
their so-called «aid» is very insignificant as compared with the
potential and possibilities of the Soviet Union. Whereas the aid and
support they give the American imperialists in their aggressive war are
much more effective. Is this not corroborated by the fact that the
Americans are withdrawing tens of thousands of troops from Europe to
dispatch to Viet Nam, since there is nothing m Europe to make the
imperialists feel uneasy about?

Revisionist demagogy which was used a great deal at the 23d Congress
cannot cover up the obvious fact that Khrushchevite revisionists do not
at all intend to aid the Vietnamese people and uphold their just cause,
because the liberation war of the people of Viet Nam, their stubborn
resistance to American imperialism, their historic victories in the
field of battle against the greatest military capitalist Power in the
world have razed to the ground the whole revisionist edifice of
«Khruschevite coexistence». It is now dealing more terrifying blows to
the revisionist, pacifist and capitulating theories on the nature of
wars at present, on the revolution and peaceful co-existence. Above all
it has become the touchstone of socialist internationalism which
mercilessly draws the line between friend and foe, shows to the whole
world who are with the people and who are with imperialism. It is
precisely on this account that Khrushchevite revisionists, who have
long betrayed Marxism-Leninism, who have ultimately departed from the
revolutionary traditions of the October Revolution and the principles
of proletarian internationalism, are not at all eager to see the
Vietnamese win, it is precisely on this account that they coordinate
their plans and acts with those of the United States for getting
«peaceful talks» under way, that is, for subjugating Viet Nam to
American imperialism.

The most dangerous splitters and enemies of the international communist movement

The 23d Congress took a new stride, the final stride in splitting the
international communist and workers movement. Of course, as in all
other matters, the Soviet revisionist leaders strove to hide their true
intentions also in dealing with the problems of the communist movement.
This shows that Khrushchev’s successors have drawn certain lessons from
Khrushchev’s sad experience. At the 23d Congress the Soviet leaders
made a lot of noise about their «loyalty» to Marxism-Leninism and the
Moscow Declarations, expressed themselves in favor of the «unity» of
the movement, Brezhneev even «offered» the hand of friendship to the
Party •of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China in his
political report.

This attitude is not only hypocritical and fraudulent but it also
bespeaks the cynicism of the Khrushchevites. While making such
declarations on the surface they plot in secret against the communist
movement and parties which stand loyal to Marxism-Leninism, come closer
to and collaborate with the Titoite clique, which has been publicly
condemned by the Moscow Declarations, organize slanders and plots
against the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China.
Not only this, but many orators, hosts and guests, immediately after
Brezhneev’s report, used the platform of the Congress to launch
unbridled calumnies against Marxist-Leninist parties, particularly,
against the Communist Party of China, accusing them of being
«warmongers», «pseudo-revolutionaries», «adventuresome», «splitters»,
and so on. There was also someone who by «delving» into theoretic
speculation coined the term of «anti-Soviet communism» in order to
slander against our parties and countries, although it is a known fact
that this «inventor» himself is one of those pioneers of modern
revisionism who, some years ago, as a banner-holder of anti-Sovietism
and wrecker of the communist party, became a member of a
counterrevolutionary government.

This campaign within the Congress directed against parties which abide
loyally by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, as well as the whole
dissentient and diversionist activity of Khrushchevite revisionists,
disclosed best the demagogy and intentions of Khrushchevite leaders.
Through their false slogans about «unity» they want to deceive
communist public opinion, to move attention away from their treason, to
achieve a cessation of public polemics so as to gain time to carry out
their treacherous schemes against Marxism-Leninism and the revolution
in peace.

The «friendship» they offered to China and Albania is an unscrupulous
demagogy, a premeditated gesture for purposes of diversion, a stale
piece of propaganda to mask their counter-revolutionary deeds.
Anti-Marxist, anti-Albanian, anti-Chinese acts are the principal
constituent part of the foreign policy of the Soviet revisionist
leaders. Khrushchevite revisionists cannot cover up this truth by any
gesture of propaganda, by any maneuver and cunning whatsoever.

The demagogic maneuvers of the Soviet leaders are also dictated by the
major difficulties and contradictions that exist within the ranks of
various revisionist groupings, they are dictated by the failures the
revisionists are meeting with from day to day. Khrushchevism is losing
more and more ground from day to day as a result of the resolute and
principled fight of the Communist Party of China, of the Party of Labor
of Albania, of the Communist Party of Japan, of the Communist Party of
New Zealand etc. and of all genuine revolutionaries to expose
Khrushchevite revisionism, and as a result of the anti-Marxist,
counter-revolutionary acts of the Soviet revisionists and others, as
well as their growing contact and collaboration with imperialists.
Khrushchev’s downfall is a very significant forewarning. Contradictions
have mounted between the Soviet leaders and the revisionist leaders of
certain other parties both as a result of the chauvinistic conduct of
the Soviet revisionists towards these parties and these socialist
countries, as well as of the economic difficulties which have arisen
for all due to the implementation of the revisionist-Titoite policy and
even to the bourgeois nationalism which has raised its head wherever
the revisionists are in power. On the other hand, the resistance of
revolutionary communists, is growing among the ranks of many
revisionist parties, for they are becoming more and more aware of the
abyss into which their revisionist leaders are leading them. This is
what is happening in the Soviet Union, this is what is happening in
other countries inn by revisionists, this is happening in communist and
workers parties of capitalist countries. In certain places
Marxist-Leninist forces operate in secret, in others openly; in certain
places, new Marxist-Leninist parties and groups are formed which
operate under conditions of complete illegality, in others these
parties and groups openly oppose revisionism. This process is now well
under way. It is an irresistible process which will sweep away
revisionist treason like an avalanche. Soviet Khrushchevites and their
allies are sensing the danger. They stand in need of a breathing period
to muster up their forces and launch their attack with renewed energy.

In order to deceive communists and lull their vigilance to sleep the
Soviet revisionists tried to minimize and wipe out altogether the
distinction between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism at the 23d
Congress too, presenting the divergences of «minor importance»,
emphasizing out loud that «what unites us is the main things and so on.

Our Party of Labor has stressed over and over again that nothing unites
and everything divides Marxist-Leninist from revisionists who have
betrayed socialism and communism. The Soviet revisionists spoke a lot
at the 23d Congress too about «unity of action» in the war against
imperialism. But is there anything to unite Marxists with revisionists
in this domain too? Not a thing. While Marxists and all revolutionaries
wage a fist to fist battle with imperialism the revisionists are allies
and lackeys of imperialism and oppose the anti-imperialist war of
peoples. To embark on a «unity of action» with the revisionists means
to give up fighting imperialism, to capitulate and submit to
imperialism.

The 23d Congress showed once again that Khrushchevite leaders are
splitters and sworn enemies of the international communist and workers
movement. Marxist-Leninists and genuine revolutionaries should
intensify their efforts to expose Khrushchevite revisionism. It is
essential to draw a clear line of demarcation with Khrushchevism, both
in the domain of policy and ideology as well as in that of
organization. Revolutionaries loyal to the cause of communism are fully
justified, it is even high time for them to organize themselves into
new anti-revisionist groups and parties. The war against revisionism,
this agency of imperialism should be waged on an even higher level.
Revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists should launch a general campaign
so that Khrushchevite schemes of fraud and treason, worked out at the
23d Congress, may come to naught. Every communist who is faithful to
the triumphant ideas of Marxism-Leninism should take a definite stand.
An undefined, centrist, wavering, neutral attitude does not serve the
cause of the revolution, the cause of communism. Khrushchevite
revisionists, as it was pointed out at their 23d Congress, are doing
their uttermost to align obedient revisionists closer to themselves and
to set up a united front against revolutionary Marxist-Leninists with
them. But they also strive to win over «new friends», pursuing, at
first, the tactics of neutralizing them with the hope of eventually
drawing them to their revisionist front.

Under the actual conditions when the war between Marxist-Leninists has
become very acute, when the treacherous acts of Khrushchevite
revisionists are not directed only against a group of communists within
the country, or against a sector of the communist movement alone, but
are directed against the entire communist movement, against the
revolution and communism, genuine communists, even if they are in the
sanctum sanctorum of Khrushchevite revisionists, cannot renounce their
principles nor replace them with obscure, abstract or half opportunist
formulae. History has proved that halfway, equivocal attitudes are very
dangerous, they are to the advantage of revisionists who prefer and
encourage them.

The establishment of a clear line of demarcation, ideological,
political and organizational separation with Khrushchevite, Titoite and
other revisionists have become an inevitable, essential and historical
exigency. The Party of Labor of Albania will continue to intensify, as
always, its principled fight against modern revisionism, will give
unreserved support to anti-revisionist communists and revolutionaries.

In an article of the «Zeri i Popullit» entitled «Khrushchevite
Revisionist Traitors Go To Their Congress with a Balance Sheet of Major
Failures» published on March 22, we wrote:

«The activities of the treacherous Khrushchevite leaders, the whole
policy they have pursued so far, show that at the Congress they will
ask to sanctify Khrushchevism but without Khrushchev. They will try to
get a license, be it ever so formal, for a congress to proceed along
the line they worked out together with Khrushchev, to proceed further
along towards capitalist degeneration of the social order in the Soviet
Union, towards splitting the world communist movement, towards
intensifying and deepening collaboration with American imperialism for
the sake of placing the world under the domination of two Great
Powers». Now that the Congress wound up its proceedings we may say that
there is nothing to add to these conclusions. Its results were what all
had expected. And it could not have happened otherwise.

The Soviet revisionist leaders went to the Congress as carriers of the
line to reestablish capitalism in the Soviet Union, but they couldn’t
very well say a thing of this kind openly to the Soviet people. They
went there as lackeys of the aggressive policy of the imperialists, but
in order to carry out their mission best they had to carefully conceal
their dealings as agents. They went there as splitter’s and saboteurs
of the communist movement but as long as they work from within, it is
essential to keep the mask on. The double-faced tactics of
Khrushchevite revisionists is not something freely picked out by them.
It has been imposed on them by circumstances, by their traitorous
mission, by the counter-revolutionary intentions they try to realize.

It was the proceedings of the 23d Congress that laid bare better than
at any time before this demagogical tactic, this duplicity, this
separation of words from deeds, this hypocrisy and cynicism of
revisionists. But this tactics, so demagogical and built on sand, is
the product of insuperable contradictions, of the exigencies of the
day, is the result of fear and failures met with. As such it is doomed
to collapse just as the revisionism which has given it life will itself
collapse.

Now that the Congress is over, Khrushchevite revisionist leaders try to
feign they are glad to have been able to preserve the appearance of
unity at the Congress, to have been able to hush up their
contradictions with their own party and their people, with their
revisionist allies and friends. But this is false joy which has no
basis whatsoever, which is wishful thinking rather than reality. The
atmosphere of uneasiness, of preoccupation for imponderables that might
come to the fore, the lack of complete assurances of those that were
said, that were brought out, in one way or another, at the discussions
of the delegates are symptoms which point out that even when the
revisionist leaders refuse to move from their place, the people move
around them, processes go on and they are unable to halt them.

The Soviet people are a great people, with a glorious revolutionary
past, with a highly developed national and internationalist awareness.
Whatever may happen, they will not tolerate for long that a group of
incorrigible renegades, who have usurped power in the Soviet Union,
draw them into a dangerous alley which is entirely opposed to their
vital interests. There will surely come a day when the banner of
Leninism will again wave aloft in the sky of the Land of the Soviets.